


peeps and prom

by damnmysterytome



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, High School, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-06-01 00:10:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6493297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnmysterytome/pseuds/damnmysterytome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank can remember the first time he ever saw Karen Page very clearly as if it was yesterday. He was in the park on a run and there was a girl sitting on one of the benches with her head buried in a book. Normally, he wouldn’t have given a damn about a girl reading on a park – but the box of peeps sitting on her lap catches his attention. They’re the purple bunnies – in the middle of the summer when peeps are not being sold.<br/>Until he learned her name when they started their senior year of high school, he referred to her as Peeps whenever he spoke about her. He offhandedly makes the comment to his friend Matt; “I’m gonna tell our kids about that one day”.<br/>He sees her throughout the summer in the park, at the grocery store, even as he’s on his early morning runs and she’s walking into the library<br/>And a normally confident Frank Castle can’t think of a single way to say hello.</p>
            </blockquote>





	peeps and prom

Frank can remember the first time he ever saw Karen Page very clearly as if it was yesterday. He was in the park on a run and there was a girl sitting on one of the benches with her head buried in a book. Normally, he wouldn’t have given a damn about a girl reading on a park – but the box of peeps sitting on her lap catches his attention. They’re the purple bunnies – in the middle of the summer when peeps are not being sold.

Until he learned her name when they started their senior year of high school, he referred to her as Peeps whenever he spoke about her. He offhandedly makes the comment to his friend Matt; “I’m gonna tell our kids about that one day”.

He sees her throughout the summer in the park, at the grocery store, even as he’s on his early morning runs and she’s walking into the library

And a normally confident Frank Castle can’t think of a single way to say hello.

Peeps is in three of his classes, English, Math, and History. He never pays more attention than during roll call to hear her name called in English; Karen Page. She barely looks up from the book in her hands to call out ‘here’.

He makes a point to get the seat next to her in Math in the middle of the day, but she’s still got a book in her hands and doesn’t pay a single piece of attention to him. He does notice that it’s a different book from the one she had in English.

History is his last class and she sits in the far back and once again she has her head buried in a different book. There’s no way she’s on her third book in one day, he thinks. But he’s barely paying attention to what the teacher is talking about, even if he can’t look back at Karen. He still thinks Peeps is a good nickname for her.

The next day at lunch, he decides that Frank Castle is not going to be some weird little love sick puppy obsessed with some girl he hasn’t even spoken to. Even though he hadn’t been able to actually talk to her any time he saw her. Not the point.

Frank finds her, after trying to causally seem like he’s just looking for a space to sit and not a specific person, in one of the corners. He shouldn’t be surprised when he sees a stack of books sitting in front of her and one in her hand as she eats what looks like a salad, but they’re all the same books from the day before. He knew there was no way she’d gotten through them all already.

He’d barely noticed what she was wearing the day before and wonders if it’s the same kind of outfit as today. She’s got a nice blouse on and he can see her skirt sticking out from under the table, her blonde hair pulled up into a loose bun.

Frank sits across from her and it takes her a moment to look up from the book in her hands to acknowledge his presence. “Hi.” Karen says, her eyebrow raised in confusion.

Her voice sounds so much like music that he forgets to reply for a moment. “Hey,”

“Nice chat.” Karen says before turning back to her book.

 _Smooth_. “Do you always read three books at a time?”

Karen looks up at him and her brow furrows and she licks her lips. “Yeah. Fiction, nonfiction, autobiography.”

“Aren’t the last two kind of the same?”

“I guess they can be.” She says, her nose crinkling up in a way that Frank finds adorable. Adorable? He’s offended at himself for thinking that word. “Are you gonna keep staring at me like that? It’s kind of freaking me out.”

Frank mumbles an apology and picks up his muffin, although why he’s eating a muffin for lunch he can’t remember, and starts picking apart at it. Karen returns to her book and Frank eats a muffin in silence.

When the bell rings for lunch, Karen stands to her feet, and picks up whatever is left of her salad and throws it away. She collects her books and holds them tightly to her chest, staring at Frank for a moment. “See you in history.” Karen said with a small grin on her face.

Frank stares back at Karen as he stands to his feet, bunching up his trash in his hands. He watches her walk away before tossing the ball of trash he’d made away from him.

Karen and Frank don’t really speak that much throughout the year after the second day of school when Frank interrupted her lunch. She joined the schools newspaper and yearbook, which took up most of her time. Sometimes he’d talk to her during Math, but Karen never really paid him that much attention.

As prom starts to round it’s corner, Frank gets a lot of invitations – and he turns every single one of them down because he’s dead set on getting Karen to go with him. Of course, getting her to go with him is a struggle – mostly because he can’t get her to stand still long enough for him to ask her.

“Can we talk later? I’m already late.” “Later!” “I don’t have time, Frank, I’ll talk to you later.”

Frank’s staying late after school (detention, he got detention for getting in a small scuffle that only left the only kid with a  _slightly_  broken nose) and heading down the hallway to finally go home when he sees Karen sitting in the classroom that the newspaper meets in. He knocks briefly but when Karen doesn’t answer, he walks into the room anyway.

He taps her shoulder when he comes up behind her and she pulls her headphones off and looks up at him. “Shit, fuck.” Frank grins, he had never heard her swear before. Well, not that he hears her talking that much. “What do you want, Frank?” She asks.

“Well, I’ve been trying to get five minutes of your time for about… Well, the whole year but especially the last few weeks.” Frank says, leaning against the table next to Karen. She looks up at him from the computer she’s working at and sighs.

“Okay, five minutes.” She says, minimizing the word document she’s working on. “I have five minutes, what do you want to talk about?”

“Are you going to prom?”

Karen shrugs and crosses her legs. “I don’t think so, unless I’m going for the yearbook, but I think someone else has that paper. But everyone else is useless here so I might be doing it anyway. Why?”

Frank forgets everything that he had planned to say to her and stuttered out something that he thinks was 'Would you like to go to prom with me’ but when Karen blinks at him he wonders if that’s not what he said at all.

“What?”

“Do you wanna go to prom? With me?”

Karen stares at Frank for a few minutes before responding. “Can’t get a date?” She asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

Frank shakes his head. “No, girls asked me. I want to go with you.” Karen tilts her head as she looks up at him and she smiles a bit, pursing her lips.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll go with you.” Karen says.

“Great. I’ll uh,”

“Your five minutes are up, Frank.” She says with an amused grin on her face, opening the word document again and pulling her phones back up to her ears.

He tells Matt again that this is a story he’s going to tell their children.

 


End file.
